[1].

DIALOGUE I.

On SINCERITY in the Commerce of the World.

DR. HENRY MORE, EDMUND WALLER, ESQ.

:

MR. WALLER.

FNOUGH, enough, my friend, on

the good old chapter of Sincerity and Honour. Your rhetoric, and not your reasoning, is too much for me. Believe it, your fine stoical lessons must all give way to a little common sense, I mean, to a prudent accommodation of ourselves to times and circumstances; which, whether you will dignify it with the name of philosophy, or no, is the only method of living with credit in the world, and even

with fafety.

VOL. I.

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DR. DR. MORE.

ACCOMMODATION is, no doubt, a good

word to stand in the place of infincerity. But, pray, in which of the great moral masters have you picked up this term, and much more, the virtuous practice, it so well expresses ?

MR. WALLER.

I LEARNT it from the great master of life, EXPERIENCE: A doctor, little heard of in the schools, but of more authority with men of sense, than all the folemn talkers of the porch, or cloister, put together.

DR. MORE.

AFTER much referve, I confess, you begin to express yourself very clearly. But, good Sir, not to take up your conclusion too hastily, have the patience to hear

MR. WALLER.

HAVE I not, then, heard, and fure with patience enough, your studied harangues on this subject? You have difcoursed it, I must own, very plausibly. But the impreffion, which fine words make, is one thing, and the conviction of reason, another, And, not to waste more time in fruitless altercation, let ME, if you please, read you a lecture of morals: not, out of ancient books, or the visions of an unpractifed philosophy, but from the schools of business and real life. Such a view of things will difcredit these high notions, and may serve, for the future, to amend and rectify all your systems.

DR. MORE.

COMMEND me to a man of the world, for a rectifier of moral systems!-Yet, if it were only for the pleasure of being let into the fecrets of this new doctrine of Accommodation, I am content to become a patient hearer, in my turn; and the rather, as the day, which, you fee, wears apace, will hardly give leave for inter

ruption, or indeed afford you time enough for the full display of your wit on this extraordinary subject.

MR. WALLER.

We have day enough before us, for the business in hand. 'Tis true, this wood-land walk has not the charms, which you lately bestowed on a certain philoSophical garden [a]. But the heavens are as clear, and the air, that blows upon us, as fresh, as in that fine evening which drew your friends abroad, and engaged them in a longer debate, than that with which I am now likely to detain you. For, indeed, I have only to lay before you the result of my own experience and observation. All my arguments are plain facts, which are foon told, and about which there can be no dispute. You shall judge for yourself, how far they

[a] The scene of Dr. MORE'S DIVINE DIALOGUES, printed in 1668.

will authorize the conclusion I mean to draw from them.

THE POINT, I am bold enough to maintain against you philosophers is, briefly, this; "That fincerity, or a scrupulous " regard to truth in all our conversation " and behaviour, how specious foever it

may be in theory, is a thing impossible " in practice; that there is no living in "the world on these terms; and that a " man of business must either quit the " scene, or learn to temper the strictness " of your difcipline with some reason"able accommodations. It is exactly " the dilemma of the poet,

"Vivere si recte nefcis, discede peritis; " of all which I presume, as I said, to " offer my own experience, as the short" est and most convincing demonstration."

DR. MORE.

THE subject, I confess, is fairly delivered, and nothing can be juster than this

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